The World Bank will provide $600m to fund small and micro-enterprises, said Sahar Nasr, Lead Financial Economist in the World Bank’s Finance and Private Sector Development Department of the Middle East and North Africa.

This comes as part of the World Bank’s desire to cooperate and work with the Egyptian government in facing the social and economic challenges it faces.

Nasr added that she supervised planning and executing these projects with the Social Fund for Development (SFD) to help create job opportunities and control the high unemployment rates especially among youth and in the neediest areas. The statement came on the margins of the launch of the Risk Capital Program, in cooperation with the SFD.

She added that the project works on encouraging financial institutions to support small- and micro-enterprises, through innovative financial tools like risk capital and financial leasing to accommodate the market.

World Bank-financed projects in Egypt focus on several areas, including: managing and developing integrated irrigation systems; improving education; SMEs, developing wind energy and electric power stations, including the Ain Sokhna power plant; controlling pollution; and building infrastructure for integrated sewage systems.

Total funding from the World Bank has reached $5.4bn over 25 projects, according to World Bank Former Country Director for Egypt, Yemen and Djibouti Hartwig Schafer.